For the past 3 years the Community Association (CA) has led the Village Sustainability Project, with great support from its project partners, Monk Fryston School, St Wilfrid’s Church, The Cricket and Football Clubs. Our aims at the outset were varied; firstly, to make our Community Buildings carbon neutral; secondly to share our learning and information as widely as possible with other interested parties so they would not have to relearn everything we had discovered and finally to provide HOPE.
We wanted to show that no matter how small and insignificant Monk Fryston and Hillam may be on the scale of settlement size – with effort and belief our joint community could make a difference and play our part to reduce carbon emissions, and to demonstrate that if we could do it – a group of volunteers with no money, no time and no expertise then any community could do it. We recognised this was particularly important to our village youngsters – we had to provide hope that there was a way to combat Climate Change and that it started at home, where we live.
The partners have faced significant challenges, but each in their own way have found ways to reduce their carbon emissions in their own way and this process is on-going. We have been recognised across Yorkshire and further afield for what we have done to date, but more importantly we are sharing our learning and encouraging others.
Over the next 15 months we will be holding showcase events in each of the partner’s buildings to share more information and provide an opportunity to anyone who is interested to see what has actually been done, to hear from experts and ask questions. We will let everyone know the dates. Meanwhile, the work continues as you will read below.
